Tommy and I both grew up in a small town in California called Lake Isabella. We met in 2010, through Tommy’s good friend, who happened to be my cousin. Tommy came from a family of five with two sisters, him being the oldest. Growing up, Tommy was a very active kid being very involved in football, baseball, and skate/ snowboarding. Though he was very involved in all of these activities, he has always been very family oriented. As for myself, I am from a family of six with three younger sisters, and I am the oldest as well. Needless to say, there was a lot of estrogen to go around. So you can imagine my Dad’s excitement when he found out Ren was a boy! Growing up, I was extremely involved in soccer. During my senior year of high school, I was still very into soccer but I began to fall more and more in love with the outdoors. I began hiking, snowboarding and whitewater rafting at our local river with friends. At the time, Tommy worked as a whitewater raft guide which led to us making a lot of our early memories on the river.

And that is where it all began for us. We both started attending BYU-Idaho in 2013. It was at this time in our lives that we both fell in love with health and fitness and found ourselves lifting and attending the gym together. As we learned to grow away from home, we grew closer to each other. It was during the same time that we decided to get engaged. We were married in San Diego, CA on September 5th, 2014. Not long after, we adopted our puppy, Teva. For the next few years, we spent the school years in Idaho and our summers in California. Tommy was gone a lot working as a wildland firefighter for five seasons on the Rio Bravo Hotshots from 2012 to 2016.

While he was gone on fires, I worked at a steakhouse upriver called McNally’s and also held down the fort at home. In 2016 we decided that we were going to expand our little family of three. After months of no luck, and with my passion still heavily in health and fitness, I chose to take a break from trying and stepped up my game by entering my first bikini bodybuilding competition. Apparently, Heavenly Father had other plans for this time of our lives. Right after committing to a coach, and a show date I found out that I had an 8cm x 8cm ovarian cyst with a possible ectopic(tubal) pregnancy. After a scary weekend of doctors appointments, I was rushed into emergency surgery where they indeed removed a 5-week old embryo that had ruptured my left fallopian tube. Despite being unable to attend the gym for weeks I continued on to compete in June of 2017. At this point, we were currently living in Rexburg, ID where we decided to stay permanently and not go back to California. Tommy worked for the Department of Idaho Corrections and I worked at the local supplement shop, Shredded Nutrition. While we were there Tommy and I both competed in the Idaho Cup in November of 2017. Tommy competed in the men’s physic category and I competed in the bikini division again. It was one of the hardest but most rewarding things I’ve ever done, and it was so cool to be able to have Tommy there to do it by my side this time!

Not long after this Tommy decided to pursue a career back in the fire service and got a job offer working for the Department of Natural Resources as a wildland firefighter. I got hired as a dental assistant in Port Angeles, WA; a town very near to where my parents had just recently moved. It all just kind of fell into our laps all at once and being by family is all I’ve ever wanted; so we relocated to Sequim, WA in March of 2018. We thought this would be a great time in our lives to pick up where we left off and begin to make another attempt at growing our family. With having trouble with fertility in the past, we had all the tools you could think of. With everything from ovulation tests to fertility apps, we were determined and in it for the long haul. The first couple negative pregnancy tests were upsetting but also expected. To our surprise, later in August, we were expecting a little bundle of joy. We feel that Heavenly Father obviously has a plan in store for us since it couldn’t have been better timing and it happened so easily this time around. Things were perfect. It really got real for us at our 6-week ultrasound when the tech reassured us that the embryo was implanted in the correct spot. We were so relieved when everything came back healthy. My pregnancy continued just like any other until shortly after our 17-week checkup. It was there that we found out that our sweet baby boy would be born with Down Syndrome. Welcome to our journey.